“Fuck!”
He exhales, almost laughing, his voice strained. “What was that now? Because I’m fairly certain that’s not the answer you meant. You feel too good to have never fu—.”
I enlist my stellar kegel skills and squeeze around him. It steals the rest of the sentence right out of his mouth.
“You were saying?” I tease, a sarcastic smirk tugging at my lips.
He stills. Jaw tight. Eyes dark and fixed on mine like he’s done being entertained.
“Stop fucking playing with me, Max,” he says, all humor gone now. “Stop stalling because you don’t want to be vulnerable.”
His forehead drops to mine. “Be with me,” he says quietly. “Right now. One week. Give me everything.”
This isn’t about sex.
This is about the way he refuses to let me disappear into the version of myself that stays safe.
He won’t let me be that version of myself here.
Not with him.
This is the Bear.
The man I knew would be dangerous if I let him close. Not because he’d hurt me. But because he sees me. The cracks. The defenses. The carefully engineered armor I wear like a winter glove. And he isn’t intimidated by it.
He wants it. He reaches for it.
My chest tightens. My pulse skids.
Fuck it.
Okay.
I can do this. I can stay right here. I can stop bracing for impact and let myself exist with him. I can give him my body, my presence, my truth—without vanishing into it.
Just this.
Just him.
One week.
“Fuck, Eli,” I gasp, and the truth finally rips its way out of me, claws and all. Everything I don’t do. Everything I stopped doing ten years ago, because it was safer that way. “I don’t give in. I don’t let go. I don’t—”
My voice fractures. Breaks right down the middle.
“I don’t fucking cry.”
The words hang there between us, exposed and shaking, like I’ve just handed him something fragile and prayed he doesn’t drop it. The way his eyes soften tells me he understands exactly what that confession costs me.
But he doesn’t rush to fix it.
Doesn’t fill the silence with promises.
“Okay,” he says simply.
And somehow, that’s everything.
He finally pulls back, the connection between us breaking with a soft, reluctant shift that leaves us both desperate for air. For a second neither of us moves, the weight of the moment still holding us in place.
